Global
warming is rapidly melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning
it into desert, leading scientists have revealed.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences
- the country's top scientific body - has announced that the glaciers
of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced
by 50 per cent every decade. Each year enough water permanently melts
from them to fill the entire Yellow River.

They added that the vast
environmental changes brought about by the process will increase droughts
and sandstorms over the rest of the country, and devastate many of the
world's greatest rivers, in what experts warn will be an "ecological
catastrophe".

The plateau, says the academy,
has a staggering 46,298 glaciers, covering almost 60,000 square miles.
At an average height of 13,000 feet above sea level, they make up the
largest area of ice outside the polar regions, nearly a sixth of the
world's total.

The glaciers have been receding
over the past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but
the process has now accelerated alarmingly. Average temperatures in
Tibet have risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, causing
the glaciers to shrink by 7 per cent a year, which means that they will
halve every 10 years.

Prof Dong Guangrong, speaking
for the academy - after a study analysing data from 680 weather stations
scattered across the country - said that the rising temperatures would
thaw out the tundra of the plateau, turning it into desert.

He added: "The melting
glaciers will ultimately trigger more droughts, expand desertification
and increase sand storms." The water running off the plateau is
increasing soil erosion and so allowing the deserts to spread.

Sandstorms, blowing in from
the degraded land, are already plaguing the country. So far this year,
13 of them have hit northern China, including Beijing. Three weeks ago
one storm swept across an eighth of the vast country and even reached
Korea and Japan. On the way, it dumped a mind-boggling 336,000 tons
of dust on the capital, causing dangerous air pollution.

The rising temperatures are
also endangering the newly built world's highest railway, which is due
to go into operation this summer. They threaten to melt the permafrost
under the tracks of the £1.7bn Tibetan railway, constructed to
link the area with China's northwestern Qinghai province.

Perhaps worst of all, the
melting threatens to disrupt water supplies over much of Asia. Many
of the continent's greatest rivers - including the Yangtze, the Indus,
the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yellow River - rise
on the plateau.

In China alone, 300 million
people depend on water from the glaciers for their survival. Yet the
plateau is drying up, threatening to escalate an already dire situation
across the country. Already 400 cities are short of water; in 100 of
them - including Beijing - the shortages are becoming critical.

Even hopes that the melting
glaciers might provide a temporary respite, by increasing the amount
of water flowing off the plateau - have been dashed. For most of the
water is evaporating before it reaches the people that need it - again
because of the rising temperatures brought by global warning.

Yao Tandong, head of the
academy's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute, summed it up. "The
full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually
lead to an ecological catastrophe," he said.

Global warming is rapidly
melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning it into desert,
leading scientists have revealed.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences
- the country's top scientific body - has announced that the glaciers
of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced
by 50 per cent every decade. Each year enough water permanently melts
from them to fill the entire Yellow River.

They added that the vast
environmental changes brought about by the process will increase droughts
and sandstorms over the rest of the country, and devastate many of the
world's greatest rivers, in what experts warn will be an "ecological
catastrophe".

The plateau, says the academy,
has a staggering 46,298 glaciers, covering almost 60,000 square miles.
At an average height of 13,000 feet above sea level, they make up the
largest area of ice outside the polar regions, nearly a sixth of the
world's total.

The glaciers have been receding
over the past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but
the process has now accelerated alarmingly. Average temperatures in
Tibet have risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, causing
the glaciers to shrink by 7 per cent a year, which means that they will
halve every 10 years.

Prof Dong Guangrong, speaking
for the academy - after a study analysing data from 680 weather stations
scattered across the country - said that the rising temperatures would
thaw out the tundra of the plateau, turning it into desert.

He added: "The melting
glaciers will ultimately trigger more droughts, expand desertification
and increase sand storms." The water running off the plateau is
increasing soil erosion and so allowing the deserts to spread.
Sandstorms, blowing in from the degraded land, are already plaguing
the country. So far this year, 13 of them have hit northern China, including
Beijing. Three weeks ago one storm swept across an eighth of the vast
country and even reached Korea and Japan. On the way, it dumped a mind-boggling
336,000 tons of dust on the capital, causing dangerous air pollution.

The rising temperatures are
also endangering the newly built world's highest railway, which is due
to go into operation this summer. They threaten to melt the permafrost
under the tracks of the £1.7bn Tibetan railway, constructed to
link the area with China's northwestern Qinghai province.

Perhaps worst of all, the
melting threatens to disrupt water supplies over much of Asia. Many
of the continent's greatest rivers - including the Yangtze, the Indus,
the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yellow River - rise
on the plateau.

In China alone, 300 million
people depend on water from the glaciers for their survival. Yet the
plateau is drying up, threatening to escalate an already dire situation
across the country. Already 400 cities are short of water; in 100 of
them - including Beijing - the shortages are becoming critical.

Even hopes that the melting
glaciers might provide a temporary respite, by increasing the amount
of water flowing off the plateau - have been dashed. For most of the
water is evaporating before it reaches the people that need it - again
because of the rising temperatures brought by global warning.

Yao Tandong, head of the
academy's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute, summed it up. "The
full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually
lead to an ecological catastrophe," he said.